Kaizen

Kaizen

Intro

Kaizen is a long-term approach that pursues small, continuous improvements to processes. In EA and BPM, it strengthens operational excellence and quality.

Key points:

  • Builds a culture of ongoing improvement.
  • Improves efficiency, quality, and employee engagement.
  • Common use cases across EA/BPM/Data/App/Tech include incremental process changes, defect reduction, and workflow simplification.
  • Pitfall: treating kaizen as one-off events instead of a sustained practice.

Examples:

  • Daily standups to remove small blockers in a service process.
  • Reducing handoffs in customer support to cut wait times.
  • Standardizing data entry to lower error rates.

In practice:

Empower teams to propose and implement small changes, measure results, and iterate.

Related terms: Lean; Continuous Improvement; Six Sigma

FAQs:

Q: Does kaizen require major investment?
A: No; it focuses on small, low-cost changes.

Q: Is kaizen compatible with agile?
A: Yes; both emphasize iterative improvement.